The Perils behind Stealing Cake
by planet p
Summary: Riva Cassidy doesn't steal her neighbour's cake -- Neeva does. Neeva/Radek


Riva Cassidy.

Riva Cassidy isn't real, yet she is. Instead, it is the name, the persona, that isn't real.

She'd come from a planet where she'd been facing execution, and had managed to make the right contacts to be sent back to Earth on a space vessel known as the _Daedalus_. Back then, her name had been Neeva Cassel.

Neeva is dead, now.

Only Riva is left.

She works for Stargate Command.

She worries that she will be found out, and that will mean death, again, but she can't go to the person/people who assisted her with a place onboard the ship, she doesn't know who they are, and she certainly doesn't know who their contacts are on this alien planet that is Earth.

So she says nothing. And pretends that she _is_ Riva.

She has a neighbour with a daughter, whose name is Janie, who likes to invite her to watch DVDs with her after school when she's home, and that's okay. She's learning about these Earth people from Janie, and she's reading the Harry Potter series so that Janie would be able to talk to someone else about them, lent to her, of course, again by Janie.

Sometimes, she forgets that she ever was Neeva, and these are the dangerous times, she supposes. She can't forget Neeva, but she must now be Riva. To forget Neeva wouldn't be right, and she doesn't like the odds of that turning into mental illness, as it is called on Earth.

She has to remember Neeva, but she likes to tell herself that she's changed now, that she's a little bit… different, that she'd not just waste lives like she had before, to protect herself sometimes, or to protect her enterprise, stealing, looting and racketeering.

She's a different Neeva, now. Well, she's Riva, isn't she?

The only problem is, there are still some people who'd know her face if they saw it, and this is what scares her the most. And, oh right, Dr. Zelenka. (Still not brave enough to ask his first name, she just gets around calling him by his last. _As_ if she's ever going to admit that she might _like_ him? He was the one she stabbed, and that, she remembers.)

Still, she's got a good thing going, because now she's in the salvaging alien technology business, which is a lot like her old business, and that helps in some small way to remind her that she'd also Neeva as well as Riva, and that she's got a lot of room for improvement of person on a, well, personal scale.

And she has a gun, which is always cool – she doesn't really feel safer, but she knows she would, if she was faced with an attacker, or attacker_s_ – as long as she doesn't actually shoot anyone who isn't out to kill her, or her 'team,' or pawn it on eBay at the first alcoholic drink, providing that she can use a computer, then, of course.

Which she's getting used to, but hope she won't get as used to it as the one known as McKay who she still can't believe Jennie, well, Jennifer, it with; mostly because McKay is all about the Great and Wonderful World of McKay, but maybe that's her, a while ago, so that's a bit of discomfort and denial, right there.

Sure, I can steal this, shoot that; hmm, what?

So she's turning to get better, but she doesn't need the personality disorder to cap it off. Is that right, or is stealing and killing already a part of the whole 'personality disorder' thing?

But she's supposed to be reading about Harry, so she puts the psychology book away before she turns out the light and reads a bit of Harry Gets In Trouble Again, before she shuts up shop for the night.

And she doesn't dream about Zelenka, except she does. (Pliers should come with warnings, she thinks, _Do not stab people, they might turn out to be someone you'll like at a later date! What if Sarah had taken one look at Reese and gone, Nop, it's time for the plier trick, this guy's a ker-reep? That would have been disastrous!_ Not that, mind you, she thinks there's anything that serious planned for the future between the scientist and her, because, really, he _is_ a scientist. And… _Why am I even thinking about this?_)

She switches the light out, then, and _doesn't_ think about Zelenka, _at all_.

In the morning, she'll conclude that dreaming's not the same as normal thinking, because she's not awake, and if she's not awake then there's nothing to take her mind off her thoughts, and it's not as though she was _even_ dreaming about anyone.

All that week, Janie wants to watch 'chick flicks.' Neeva wonders if the kid's a mind reader, or what she even did to be subjected to the soppy, icky, chick-flicky things, anyway. Oh, right, that was it, she stole that piece of cake from Janie's mom's fridge!

She's got to stop with the cake, she thinks.

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**The Perils behind Stealing Cake** by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _Stargate: Atlantis _or any of its characters.


End file.
